Dishwashing agents are available to consumers in a large number of presentation forms. In addition to the traditional liquid hand dishwashing agents, automatic dishwashing agents have particular significance now that household automatic dishwashers are widespread. These automatic dishwashing agents are offered to the consumer typically in solid form, for example as powders or tablets, but increasingly also in liquid form. Emphasis has for some time been placed principally on convenient dispensing of washing and cleaning agents, and on simplification of the working steps necessary for carrying out a washing or cleaning method.
Furthermore, one of the main objectives of manufacturers of automatic cleaning agents is to improve the cleaning performance of these agents, increased attention recently having been paid to cleaning performance in cleaning cycles consisting of low-temperature and/or reduced water consumption. To this end, new ingredients, for example more-effective surfactants, polymers, enzymes or bleaching agents, have been added to the cleaning agents. Because new ingredients are available only to a limited extent, however, and because for environmental and economic reasons the quantity of the ingredients used per cleaning cycle cannot be arbitrarily increased, there are natural limits to this approach to a solution.
In this connection, apparatuses for multiple dispensing of dishwashing and cleaning agents have very recently come under scrutiny by product developers. With regard to these apparatuses, a distinction may be made between on the one hand dispensing chambers integrated into the automatic dishwasher, and on the other hand separate devices independent of the automatic dishwasher. By means of these apparatuses, which contain several times the quantity of cleaning agent required to carry out a cleaning method, washing- or cleaning-agent portions are automatically or semi-automatically dispensed into the interior of an automatic dishwasher in the course of multiple successive cleaning processes. For the consumer, the need for manual dispensing for each cleaning or dishwashing cycle is eliminated. Examples of such apparatuses are described in European patent application EP 1 759 624 A2 (Reckitt Benckiser) or in German patent application DE 53 5005 062 479 A1 (BSH Bosch and Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH).
It would be advantageous in this connection to have available a method for transmitting information items between an automatic dishwasher and a dispenser arranged in the automatic dishwasher, with the result that cleaning-agent delivery from such dispensers would be capable of further optimization, for example by way of an exact coordination with the washing programs executing in the dishwasher.
The object of the invention is therefore to make available an economical and reliable method for wireless transmission of information items between a dispensing apparatus movably arranged in the interior of an automatic dishwasher and an automatic dishwasher. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.